Material handling systems are used in a wide variety of environments, whether for logistics, shipping, and/or manufacturing. Typical implementations include a series of conveyors, such as roller conveyors or belt conveyors, that are used to move or locate items throughout a particular location, such as a warehouse or manufacturing plant. In today's competitive market, the costs of installation as well as maintenance and operation of such conveyor systems are always a concern. Most conveyor systems are underutilized, that is, they are not constantly loaded with items to transport. As a result, powered rollers or belts constantly drain power without transporting any particular item. Moreover, the costs associated with providing the rollers can be quite expensive considering the spacing between individually transported items.
Automatic guided vehicles, or AGVs for short, have been developed to transport on pallets and other heavy items in large warehouses. One such example has been developed by Kiva Systems Inc. which is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,826,919 to D'Andrea et al., which is hereby incorporated by reference. However, such systems are typically slow, low volume systems that transport bulk items rather than individual items. Similarly, transport shuttles have been developed for transporting heavy items, such as described in US Publication No. 2011/0008138 A1 to Yamashita, which is hereby incorporated by reference, but they experience similar drawbacks. OPEX Corporation has developed mail sorting systems that utilize semiautonomous robots for sorting the mail. An example of such a mail sorting system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,861,844 to Hayduchok et al., which is hereby incorporated by reference. However, these mail sorting systems are adapted for small-scale environments and lack a number of features required for high-volume transport of items in warehouses and manufacturing plants.
Thus, there is a need for improvement in this field.